Fixed Cost Vs Hourly Cost : Which One To Consider For App Development ?

Whenever anyone takes a decision of moving ahead with mobile app development , the very first factors that strikes people mind is the cost of developing the app . But even before going ahead with the app development , have you ever thought of the full defined features that will be present in your would be Mobile application ?

Especially when you are budget constraint , you have to predefine the features to get the exact cost estimate of developing a product .

But inspite of taking into consideration various factors , an app development company or app developers will unfortunately not be able to provide you with exact exact figure of app development cost . As the pricing of the app development depends on various variable elements such as man-hours to be spent , whether a company or freelancer has been choose by you for an app development , on which platform you want your app , ie Android or iOS , do you want the app on Hybrid or Native , technical’s aspects , the location of the development team and so on .

In addition to it , in case you are planning to key in some more features in your app ( which is the usual case with most of us ) which is beyond your predefined scope of work , you have to pay more for the add on features .

We are all aware that when talking about the app development industry , most of the companies follow dual pricing model :

Fixed price model

Hourly price model

Fixed Price Model

The fixed price model is best suitable if you have a pre defined scope of work . App development company will give you a fixed cost with predefined timeline with almost no scope in alternation of the project .

In this model , app idea , implementation of features and functionalities , platform on which app needs to be developed on are all well defined in advance . This is specially the case with the project which are small and have low budget . So it is not the touch task , even a small team will be able to accomplish it easily .

But you have to always keep in mind that in fixed price contract do not expect a single , I repeat ” not a single ” change in terms and condition of the contract under any circumstances .

However the biggest cons of this model is you are more concerned about your budget in comparison to what you are getting as a product in terms of quality , which may also results in failure .

Essential Features Of Fixed Cost Agreement

The budget and timeline to complete the app is predefined in advance with mutual agreement between developer and client .

The development team knows in advance how to mould the app to give it a highly polished shape and they will focus on app UI designing accordingly .

You are not allowed to change the features later on , probably not in any case .

Situation When Fixed Price Cost Work Best

When you are planning to launch a simple app without any complexity .

You have a limited budget and no other alternatives can be chosen .

You are planning a Minimum Viable Product or App Prototype to test your app idea

Hourly Pricing Model

A hourly pricing module as the name denotes is based on the manta of hourly pricing . The hourly cost varies from region to region and from one company to another .

For instance say you have hired a single resource in some app development company for 600 hours , and their hourly rate of what they are charging is $ 25 per hour , then you have to pay $ 15000 to them which is multiplication of $ 25 and 600 hours .

The hourly rate or we can say Time and Material Model is preferable for clients who have a vision to make the app with demand on the go , rather than predefining everything in advance . As you have hired freelancer or company on hourly basis . As you have hired as per your flexibility , you are most welcome to share your suggestions together with using their expertise knowledge on improving the overall quality of product .

The best thing being you can always add on more features as per your convenience .

Essential Features Of Hourly Pricing Model

The pricing depends on working hours and rates they charge as per their skills .

The price is not fixed in advance , so it can be higher or lower as per your requirement .

Not only cost , but timeline of the project is also flexible .

Client and developer both can give their valuable inputs from time to time for addition as well as removal of any unnecessary features .

Situation When Hourly Price Cost Work Best

The hourly rate approach works best when you have a clear app idea and you are not sure about validating it .

When you have a really complicated project with not pre defined requirement .

When you directly want to get involved with project and desire to know how developers are proceeding with given task .

Fixed Cost VS Hourly Rates : The Conclusion

We have discussed in details about the two popular pricing models that almost all app development companies follows in present scenario . Every model has their own pros and cons . If you are choosing a fixed price model , you might get a quality comprimisement and not any further scope of changes . Alternatively choosing hourly basis model will always be on higher side in terms of pricing but you can get your product as desired .